


i can't help but stare ('cause i see truth somewhere in your eyes)

by holymalfoys



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Memory Loss, Pining, Uhh idk what else to put here, anyway, enjoy, if that makes sense, it’s 3am what am i doing, unrequited but not really unrequited love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-28 09:13:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20776118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holymalfoys/pseuds/holymalfoys
Summary: "Richie wondered how he had ever forgotten Eddie. It was the same old him, with the inhaler and the intoxicating brown eyes and the sharp tongue and quick wit. The most stable force in the room. He was the only thing Richie latched on to, because there was just something about him that drew Richie in.Eddie. Eddie Kaspbrak. The most virginal virgin Richie had ever known.And he’d gone and gotten married. To a living, breathing woman, nonetheless.Richie didn’t know why that surprised him, or why it hurt as bad as it did."Or, Richie doesn't remember until it's too late.





	i can't help but stare ('cause i see truth somewhere in your eyes)

**Author's Note:**

> we out here, breaking our own hearts!

Richie Tozier got the call just before he was due to go on stage for one of his biggest gigs to date. His world shifted violently from vivid color to black and white in the span of just shy of five minutes, and he didn’t really know what to do, so he vomited up his expensive sushi lunch and tried to go back to what he did best: bullshit his way through what became of his world without letting anything affect him.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work. The jokes, which were usually fine and usually good and usually successful, suddenly felt _ wrong. _ Something stirred in his gut as he tried to shake the feeling that everything was so very _ wrong _ and not at all right, but he didn’t know what, so he called it quits early and went back to his expensive apartment that felt too big and too wonky and too _ wrong. _

_ Wrong. _ That was how everything felt: wrong, twisted, warped out of shape.

That night, his dreams were plagued with memories that he didn’t know very well.

Didn’t know at all. 

Laughter rang in his ears and phantom brown eyes stared back at him, and, for the first time in a very long time, he woke up crying and achingly alone.

~

Los Angeles was very far away from Derry, it turned out.

The flight twisted and dipped and flipped and dropped, but maybe that was just his stomach. He didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, didn’t do anything at all.

Instead, he stared out the window, out into the vast expanse of the nothingness that mirrored the emptiness that had occupied his heart.

~

Richie never dwelled on the past. He knew he had one, of course he did- he was a forty year old man, he had to have something that built his character.

But he didn’t know it. Bile rose in his throat as he tried desperately to remember something, _ anything _, but kept meeting blanks.

He remembered a girl, with hair redder than fire. A fat kid who had a knack for poetry. A skinny boy with a fondness for birds. A boy plagued by his past, chasing demons as he tried to come to terms with... _ something _. An orphaned black kid, one of the only in Derry, who worked on a farm.

A hypochondriac, with the fiercest temper, brownest eyes and most interesting personality Richie thought he had ever come across.

Himself, a lanky nerd with a too-big mouth and fear deep in his heart.

But there was something else, something he was not seeing. It scared him, not remembering what, exactly, that something was.

~

Driving into Derry was the strangest action Richie had ever taken.

He crossed a bridge that somehow called out to him. He thought there might have been something there… whatever, he’d go check later.

His heart thumped in his chest, and his sticky palms clung to the steering wheel. God, he was tired, so overcome with exhaustion, that he was tempted to pull over and just sleep.

Still, he drove on, through the slew of emotions that pounded his brain into something resembling mush and beat his chest until it was so heavy it felt like it was filled with lead.

~ 

When he walked into that Chinese restaurant, his world was switched over again, suddenly more bright and vivid than it had been since he’d gotten the call.

But there was something off, still.

Everyone was so different. The fat kid- Ben- wasn’t fat any more; the redhead- Bev- was more quiet than he remembered; bird boy wasn’t there- Stan, Richie thought, Stan the man; the boy of demons past was shiny, new, collected- Big Bill; orphan boy- Mike- was older now, more wise- more dedicated, Richie thought; and Eddie…

Richie wondered how he had ever forgotten Eddie. It was the same old him, with the inhaler and the intoxicating brown eyes and the sharp tongue and quick wit. The most stable force in the room. He was the only thing Richie latched on to, because there was just something about him that drew Richie in.

Eddie. Eddie Kaspbrak. The most virginal virgin Richie had ever known.

And he’d gone and gotten _ married_. To a living, breathing _woman_, nonetheless. 

Richie didn’t know why that surprised him, or why it hurt as bad as it did.

~

The next few days went okay. The Losers, Richie remembered their name, fell back into step with each other, started learning more about each other and piecing together their pasts.

Richie was enjoying himself. He was enjoying Eddie more, though, enjoying watching him out of the corner of his eye and just keeping him under tabs.

Eddie Kaspbrak was a funny fish. Richie reckoned he liked him a lot.

The days drew on and on, and then it came out.

“A killer clown? Seriously?” Richie was gobsmacked. His life had, once again, been switched around, straight back to black and white.

Stone cold fear gripped him, and he had to get out. He had to get away.

He had to get him and Eddie out of there, together, and far away. He didn’t know why he needed to bring Eddie, only that he did; his heart hadn’t stopped screaming about how important it was to get him away.

Also, he didn’t think he wanted to forget Eddie again, not this time.

They packed their stuff, were halfway down the stairs with it, and then Bill had to be the leader and get it all under wraps. 

So they stayed, begrudgingly, and the sense of impending doom leeched itself onto Richie and wouldn’t let go.

~

The memories crawled back, slice by slice.

Richie realized why he couldn’t have left without Eddie.

He loved him.

Back then, when they were kids, and now, when they were adults.

Loved the way he spoke with his hands, loved the way he walked, laughed, smiled, cried, frowned, _ existed _. 

Richie figured he loved him all along, and would love him until the end of time.

The realization switched his life around yet again.

~

They were running out of time.

Neibolt house was just as large as he remembered it to be, just as scary. The sewers were as dark as he remembered, too; the echoes gave him the creeps.

Pennywise was there, too. Grinning like a maniac, piercing Richie’s soul with that taunting tune:

_ I know your secret, your dirty little secret. _

As much as Richie writhed and screamed and cried, he couldn’t move, frozen in space and time and completely at the mercy at those three yellow lights at the back of an ever-looming mouth.

And then they stopped.

Richie was on the ground, panting, sobbing, but alright. And Eddie was in front of him, sweaty and grinning and so, so beautiful.

“Richie, I killed it! I fucking killed it!”

He was the bravest man Richie ever knew, in that moment and every moment before, and he loved him with every ounce of his aching being.

But.

But a piercing arm squelched through Eddie’s chest, through his heart, suddenly and painfully and noisily. As he fell, Richie caught him.

_ No, no, no. This wasn’t supposed to happen. _ Richie was supposed to keep him safe, keep him happy and healthy and _ alive _.

Richie lay him oh-so-carefully on the cold ground. Eddie’s breathing was rapid, but horrible and whistling and _ oh god he was dying and Richie couldn’t do anything about it. _

“Richie,” his voice was soft, barely there. “Richie. You know, I… I fucked your mom.”

And he leaned back, and died.

Richie sobbed, lurched forward and grabbed the corpse, pressing him to his chest. “No, no, no,” he repeated, over and over and over again. “No… no, Eddie, don’t go, please, I love you, Eddie I love you, please, please, please…”

He didn’t stop crying for a long, long time. He cried as finally killed It, cried as they left the sewers in a hurry, cried as Mike and Ben restrained him from running back into the collapsing house, cried as they jumped into the quarry, cried as they walked back to the townhouse, cried all night.

Seven had become five, but it may as well have become four.

~

It wasn’t until much, much later that Richie thought about Eddie’s last words. “I fucked your mom”. That phrase brought forth a barrage of memories; Richie and Eddie sharing a hammock, Eddie telling Richie he fucked his mom after Richie called him a vagina, Richie laughing so hard he cried. 

He realized that Eddie died trying to make him laugh, that even in the end, Eddie had tried to one up him.

As he drove to the bridge and recarved that R + E for the people they were and they people they became, he thought that maybe, just maybe, Eddie loved him back.

And wasn’t that such a beautiful thought?

~

After Derry, life didn’t exactly go back to the way it was. 

Ben and Beverly moved away together, and, while Richie was happy for them and all, he couldn’t help but feel as though that should have been him and Eddie.

Mike finally left Derry. Richie invited him to LA, but he politely declined. “I have business in Florida,” he said, and Richie knew better than to ask.

Bill returned home to the wife he suddenly realized he loved. He invited Richie to come and stay with them- Richie said he’d think about it.

And Richie; well, Richie went back to LA, alright. But now he wrote his own material, which was more vulgar than before, but he never, ever used the line “I fucked your mom”. His new aim was to make Eddie laugh, and he liked to think he was doing a good job of it.

He started going to therapy. His world hadn’t ever returned to what it used to look like, and he was okay with that. He didn’t think he wanted it to go hack to how it was, back when he had forgotten about his Eddie.

It would take a long time for him to heal. Richie was alright with time. He liked feeling, he found. It was nice.

Somehow, he knew he would be okay; the big brown eyes in his dreams told him that he would, and he was inclined to believe them.

After all, they were Eddie Kaspbrak's, and Eddie Kaspbrak was the bravest man Richie Tozier ever knew.


End file.
